It really depends on what you like. There's still an inherent difference in AP compared to consumables though. AP feels necessary during progression, but it's pretty inefficient until the artificial multiplier finishes weeks down the line. Getting AP when AK is done feels pretty good, but it also makes the work you did during that time feel largely inefficient. AP is also finite and if you want to maximize it during times of progression, you need to check in everyday (generally) and do AP quests. AP is also capped based on patch cycle to prevent people from getting too far ahead, whereas consumables are largely static, you can farm them when you want (or buy them on the AH), and yo ucan also stockpile them for future content.

I don't like AP, I don't like daily quests, and I don't like farming consumables either. Consumable farm on my rogue at the start of TBC was probably the worst thing I've ever experienced (think farming current expansions consumable requirements, in addition to a few of the previous expansions consumables, simply because the content was bugged/overtuned and there was nothing stopping you from doubling up on vanilla/TBC consumables). I'd still prefer consumables for 'progression' from a raiding standpoint though, because I can do it when I like and stockpile for the future. I'm mixed on how they are approaching consumables in 8.2 because they are for the most part obsoleting consumables from launch, in favor of more powerful ones (generally, you only see gems get stronger as an expansion goes on).

Besides epic gems in TBC, everything you got at the start of the expansion was useful through the entire expansion. Vanilla was like this too. You could make an educated guess that fire resistance potions were going to be needed upon launch, and you might not think to save nature/frost resistance potions for future raids, but now we have that knowledge and you can prepare accordingly well over a year in advance.

I'm with you that it's all largely the same (tedious tasks, meant to keep you engaged in the game), but not all tedium is the same.

I never really found them difficult TBH. They were Vanilla inspired dungeons with the occasional boss that had mechanics. But Vanilla inspired, I mean mobs had random cleaves, CC, stuns and etc. The only difference between the two is mobs actually hit incredibly hard in TBC dungeons, but they was literally the only mechanic they had. I vividly remember the hound master packs in Shattered Halls yelling "We cannot be stopped" removing and enraging both of his dogs, and the dog proceeding to run over and nearly one shot the shaman in our group.

Difficulty? Naw. When you realize mobs just do stupid amounts of damage your approach to them changes. You CC mobs and you group kite. All I remember doing in the majority of dungeons (especially Shattered Halls) was our warrior getting an baseline amount of threat, and the running away. It was popular to bring multiple mages to groups to deal with dungeons like this, but you could just kite things like we did. Our entire approach was tab targeting shiv/crippling onto everything and having the two range kite things lol.

Before M+, I think Cataclysm dungeons prior to the changes encompassed the ideal difficulty for dungeon content. Trash didn't hit stupid hard, but if you over pulled and didn't interrupt, you would die. Bosses also had mechanics that you largely couldn't ignore, and individual responsibility became pretty important. Five man content in Cataclysm literally felt like a small raid. It was literally like Vanilla/TBC with trash design, but with layers of difficulty on the bosses that you would except from raid. By comparison, normal/heroic/mythic dungeon content in Legion/BFA is fairly trivial by comparison simply because M+ can potentially drive the dungeons to that point that you can't actually beat them if you climb high enough.

His wording is pretty spot on
1.xx is designed around macroeconomics, gear, consumables
I wanna say from 4.xx (ulduar really, 3.1~) the game was designed around individual player performance

Farming mats for flasks and crafted resistance gear is tedium; large amounts of easy tasks.
Outside of very few fights, vanilla difficulty was about consumables and resistances. Not running out of mana in 300+ resistance gear.

Fights like cho'gall, sinestra, etc, were about individual player performance. Same with hardmodes past ulduar.

No where in his post did he say anything to this effect. The best argument he put forth was "one of the best players in the world" was getting killed in the open world and that "you people don't get it." None of which echos what you just put forward here.

I posted a thread about this. apparently some mob damage matches vintage videos, backing out probable armor etc in the videos, yet there just isn't enough damage being done to parties to justify anything people remember pre-2.3.

I speculated mob swing timers have been lengthened. it would not show up combat logs in a way that would lend itself to detection.

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the most interesting part is people report weak instance mobs, but correct outdoor questing tuning. it is an improbable 'false memory' construction to see so commonly. I know there are people on standby to explain this with the 4 reasons (blizz has an alleged 1.12 test server which helped the demo be 100% right, false memories/12 years, and private server contamination, either by direct experience or osmosis, or better players)

Swing timers being off I could actually see. That seems like a Blizzard thing to miss in their quest for accurate numbers on hit.

I also just realized the reason we've heard tumbleweeds about this may be because it's 10 levels over the cap. Players who did exploration said high level mobs looked broken animation wise. May be past 30 is an unfinished no man's land.

Blizz's post on damage being right compared VC runs, right? Not SM.

WoW: Wyrmrest Accord - Alliance
Classic: Bloodsail Buccaneers - Alliance
FFXIV: Crystal Datacenter (Balmung & Mateus servers)"In the spirit of education, the first thing I would like to impress upon you is one of the most surprising lessons I learned: Public speculation is always wrong. Always." - John Staats, The WoW Diary

Swing timers being off I could actually see. That seems like a Blizzard thing to miss in their quest for accurate numbers on hit.

I also just realized the reason we've heard tumbleweeds about this may be because it's 10 levels over the cap. Players who did exploration said high level mobs looked broken animation wise. May be past 30 is an unfinished no man's land.

Blizz's post on damage being right compared VC runs, right? Not SM.

I believe blizzard only address a couple of mobs in DM, and did not address dps, just damage per hit (meaning swing timers ignored).

At this point the best thing I can see to do is make folks interested in this topic from an accuracy viewpoint make note that the there is more than one way to numerically explain lower net mob dps vs party. a matching damage number means the frequency could be the problem.

Having levelled several characters in vanilla - one of which very heavily through dungeons, and also a Classic beta player, I can't say I really agree with this post's premise. For starters, we're only L30 in the beta - you can't make a meaningful comparison because most people will remember max level dungeons.

Comparison to max level dungeons will also be dicey (not that we even can compare yet) as we all know Strath, Scholo and UBRS had their group size changed - I have a few memories of these places, but I couldn't tell you in which version most of them were from.

I know it's been said before, but it is worth repeating here - these low level dungeons, most people will have done them either when they were very very new to the game or someone else in the group was. When all of you have some semblance of what to do and how not to accidentally pull 4 extra packs etc. they aren't really challenging - they never were. I do really think that the average player - at least in the beta, being fairly decent does also help in this regard. I haven't really played with anyone yet that seemed to have no idea what they were doing.

Anyone who started leveling an alt in vanilla after they played the end-game realises this though right? I first rolled a priest back in vanilla and I was completely clueless. By the time we where doing BWL I rolled a warrior alt and leveled it with some friends.

I ran wailing caverns on my warrior alt we cleared it in 30 minutes. I had difficultly understanding how we had managed to spend 3 hours in there the first time around on my priest. It was the same through out the levelling process.

That said, next to the fact that we knew what we where doing we also had a stockpile of rare BOE's and plenty of funds to fill in any gaps in our gear.

I never really found them difficult TBH. They were Vanilla inspired dungeons with the occasional boss that had mechanics. But Vanilla inspired, I mean mobs had random cleaves, CC, stuns and etc. The only difference between the two is mobs actually hit incredibly hard in TBC dungeons, but they was literally the only mechanic they had. I vividly remember the hound master packs in Shattered Halls yelling "We cannot be stopped" removing and enraging both of his dogs, and the dog proceeding to run over and nearly one shot the shaman in our group.

Difficulty? Naw. When you realize mobs just do stupid amounts of damage your approach to them changes. You CC mobs and you group kite. All I remember doing in the majority of dungeons (especially Shattered Halls) was our warrior getting an baseline amount of threat, and the running away. It was popular to bring multiple mages to groups to deal with dungeons like this, but you could just kite things like we did. Our entire approach was tab targeting shiv/crippling onto everything and having the two range kite things lol.

Before M+, I think Cataclysm dungeons prior to the changes encompassed the ideal difficulty for dungeon content. Trash didn't hit stupid hard, but if you over pulled and didn't interrupt, you would die. Bosses also had mechanics that you largely couldn't ignore, and individual responsibility became pretty important. Five man content in Cataclysm literally felt like a small raid. It was literally like Vanilla/TBC with trash design, but with layers of difficulty on the bosses that you would except from raid. By comparison, normal/heroic/mythic dungeon content in Legion/BFA is fairly trivial by comparison simply because M+ can potentially drive the dungeons to that point that you can't actually beat them if you climb high enough.

What people makes think that amounth of mechanics is what determinates difficulty of boss. Thats absolute nonsense. Mechanics ate just 1 part what can make enncounters hard it is not THE main thing. Yes dmg, hp, mana managment, threat managment, cc, etc makes boss hard just like any type of mechanic.

I played vanilla and definitely remember them being as hard if not harder than the levelling. The guys in the beta are reporting levelling being MUCH hard than private servers but dungeons being WAY easier. They are talking about the possibility there was a stealth nerf to dungeons in 1.12

I hope this wasn't the case as easy dungeons will really suck in classic imo, what do you guys reckon?

Well the beta is up to level 30. There was nothing really difficult about these low level dungeons. Just about enough to have fun and not need the tank and healer go re-spec for it.
Just wait for Scholo, Strat and the like.

I played vanilla and definitely remember them being as hard if not harder than the levelling. The guys in the beta are reporting levelling being MUCH hard than private servers but dungeons being WAY easier. They are talking about the possibility there was a stealth nerf to dungeons in 1.12

I hope this wasn't the case as easy dungeons will really suck in classic imo, what do you guys reckon?

When I played Vanilla, I was a keyboard turning, backpedaling, ability clicker. I've done those dungeons to death in various stages of the game. I remember them being challenging in certain aspects, but never 'hard'.

I've done a few low level dungeons on beta, and sure - they were pretty easy with the groups I had. That's to be expected now. People always said Vanilla dungeons and raiding was hard. It was only hard due to being complete noobs at the genre. Anyone who has raided more recently will find classic raiding a snorefest.

Just eight countries in the region are responsible for about 63 percent of total plastic waste flowing into the oceans. Little of that junk has been exported by rich economies. Instead, it's almost solely generated by Asia's newly minted consumer classes, the vast majority of whom lack awareness to garbage collection, modern landfills and incineration. Any progress in reducing ocean plastic will have to start with them. Bloomberg. 2018.

No its about dungeons and according to u ppl it took u thousands of hours to preper for raids, and since dungeons was a big part of gearing for raids i have ppl telling me of how they spended 3-5 hours inside dungeons to clear them cause of high difficulty. It wasnt the shit class balance or no toolkit or the shitty internet or the clueless ppl. It was pure high difficulty of dungeons.

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So all those 3.7 mil players that did that slider difficulty in m+ and the 500k plus that did hc and mythic BOD last week according to raider io and warcrtaft logs, did not enjoy the multiple difficulties but went and do it cause they had a gun pointed to their head. And since classic raiding is more fun for ppl and the only source of that is PS servers since classic isnt out yet, we come to the conclusion that over 500k ppl do classic raiding on PS since its more popular than retail. Lets add another 3-4 million that dont raid and we have aproxx 4 million ppl playing classic worldwide on PS servers.

And before u say anything about the above numbers all the entries are for unique players.

To be fair, those numbers count alts separate so it isn’t all that impressive tbh. That should read something like 20 mill m+ done and 4 million who did the raid.

Could just be one million players and their Alts. It doesn’t mean it had 3.7 accounts in mythic

Well the beta is up to level 30. There was nothing really difficult about these low level dungeons. Just about enough to have fun and not need the tank and healer go re-spec for it.
Just wait for Scholo, Strat and the like.

Prior to serious raid content no tank had to spec prot. Especially with low level gear it was favorable to be fury or arms to generate more threat. Tanks in Classic and TBC scaled particularily bad with gear, e.g. rage generation was still mostly linked to damage taken...

Even with limited tool kits, a lot of people understand core concepts better now than they did then.

LoS 15 years ago? Forget about it.
Kiting 15 years ago? Forget about it.
Interrupts and stuns? Well, that's still kinda mixed even after 15 years, lol.

All of the Vanilla dungeons are pretty easy if you don't over pull and either kite or use LoS to your advantage if you find yourself in a terrible spot. When these things happened when I played, people just fell over like flies and panic ensued.

I do not understand why most people think that people played Vanilla were basically drooling on themselves on the other side of the screen.

I do not understand why most people think that people played Vanilla were basically drooling on themselves on the other side of the screen.

Eh. To be honest, most of those "techniques" WERE quite foreign back then. Sure, LoS was a thing against any ranged group, but it took a while for it to be a more "widespread" practice amongst the average gaming population - Not that it's practiced by the general public now. But I only did LoS pulls on pulls that "needed" it otherwise wipe, and I never, EVER kited, primarily because there weren't many mechanics, if any at all, that required kiting (I feel like I remember that elites moved faster then players, and a large number were immune to slows. But it's been a long time for me).

Interupts were sparse in Vanilla - Paladins, Priests, Druids, and Hunters didn't have interupts, and that's nearly half the classes! Warriors, Mages, Warlocks, Rogues, and Shamans did, but all of them were on the GCD back then - And most casts you had to interupt were fast, <1.5 second casts, so if your GCD was up, forget about interupting. Also, Rogues/Warriors interupts costed energy/rage, Mage/Warlock interupts were on an even longer CD then current, and alliance didn't even have shamans! Plus they generated additional threat! The good news was interupts (Except Shaman's Earth Shock) lasted much longer - 2 rogues or 2 warriors were generally enough to keep a mob spell-locked forever. (Or 3 mages. You didn't want Shaman's on an interupt rotation, because they WOULD eventually overtake the tank in threat due to the high threat generation of Earth Shock). Stuns were slightly more common, but not by much.

Anyone ever notice how the sun seems to shine silverish now? Didn't it used to shine goldish? PM me if you've noticed this.

WOW was most peoples first MMO. It was new and they didn’t understand the mechanics. Since then, we have had so many mmos and rpgs that have similar mechanics that going back to vanilla is going back to the basics. Its like graduating college, then going back to first grade. First grade was difficult when you experienced it for the first time, but now it is childs play.

RIP Genn Greymane, Permabanned on 8.22.18

Your name will carry on through generations, and will never be forgotten.

Eh. To be honest, most of those "techniques" WERE quite foreign back then.

Come on - 'line of sight' isn't a super advanced idea that takes genius level brains or years to comprehend. The idea that somehow people back then were idiots and we're all ultra-advanced now is just silly.